Droid Life » DashClockhttp://www.droid-life.com
An intense Android news community bringing you the latest in phones, rooting, apps, and reviews.Sat, 01 Aug 2015 18:19:40 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3Roman Nurik Shares Google’s Material Design Approach to the Google I/O Apphttp://www.droid-life.com/2014/08/05/roman-nurik-shares-googles-material-design-approach-to-the-google-io-app/
http://www.droid-life.com/2014/08/05/roman-nurik-shares-googles-material-design-approach-to-the-google-io-app/#commentsTue, 05 Aug 2014 20:26:22 +0000http://www.droid-life.com/?p=147100Roman Nurik Shares Google’s Material Design Approach to the Google I/O App is a post from: Droid Life
]]>Last week, Google released the source code for their Google I/O app. Since the app is used as a reference for new design guidelines with Android apps, this is a pretty big deal for app developers, especially those looking to adopt Google’s newest set of guidelines, Material Design, and implement them into their own apps.

In a follow-up to last week’s release, Roman Nurik (the lead designer of the I/O app and master of DashClock and Muzei) took to the Android Developers Blog to share his team’s design thinking of this year’s app. Not only does he walk you through the thought process and changes between releases of the I/O app, he also talks about Material Design shadows, colors, layouts, grids, and more.

Material Design introduces massive changes to app design that I can only imagine will take time for designers to get the hang of. If you want to see and learn about Material Design, this is a must read and watch.

]]>http://www.droid-life.com/2014/08/05/roman-nurik-shares-googles-material-design-approach-to-the-google-io-app/feed/21Roman Nurik, Creator of DashClock, Releases Muzei Live Wallpaper to Google Playhttp://www.droid-life.com/2014/02/12/roman-nurik-creator-of-dashclock-releases-muzei-live-wallpaper-to-google-play/
http://www.droid-life.com/2014/02/12/roman-nurik-creator-of-dashclock-releases-muzei-live-wallpaper-to-google-play/#commentsWed, 12 Feb 2014 17:00:51 +0000http://www.droid-life.com/?p=132147Roman Nurik, Creator of DashClock, Releases Muzei Live Wallpaper to Google Play is a post from: Droid Life
]]>It’s been exactly one year since Roman Nurik introduced the DashClock widget to the Android community. Since then, that app has seen crazy popularity, with many developers building onto its platform with their very own extensions making it even more useful. Apps like DashClock are a prime example of why Android is so sweet. With that said, Roman released a new app to Google Play last night, titled Muzei.

Muzei – Russian for museum – is a live wallpaper app that features famous works of art that rotate out each day to refresh your homescreen. Once applied, you can double tap on your homescreen to focus on the picture – then after a few seconds, the art is blurred out so as to bring the spotlight onto your icons and widgets.

If famous works like Starry Night and the Mona Lisa don’t interest you, users can add in their own pretty pictures to the app, which can be refreshed every hour up to every three days.

Much like DashClock, Muzei is completely open source with an API that looks very similar to Roman’s previous work. For developers hoping to get into the live wallpaper game, go check out the code on his site here.

The app is completely free, so go grab it off of Google Play right now and let us know what you think.

]]>http://www.droid-life.com/2014/02/12/roman-nurik-creator-of-dashclock-releases-muzei-live-wallpaper-to-google-play/feed/36DashClock Updated to 1.6, New Customization Options and Bug Fixes in Towhttp://www.droid-life.com/2013/12/30/dashclock-updated-to-1-6-new-customization-options-and-bug-fixes-in-tow/
http://www.droid-life.com/2013/12/30/dashclock-updated-to-1-6-new-customization-options-and-bug-fixes-in-tow/#commentsMon, 30 Dec 2013 16:50:13 +0000http://www.droid-life.com/?p=128427DashClock Updated to 1.6, New Customization Options and Bug Fixes in Tow is a post from: Droid Life
]]>DashClock, the venerable widget by Google Engineer Roman Nurik for devices running Android 4.2 and above, solves what some may consider a weakness of Android: lack of information on the lockscreen. The notification shade may just be a swipe away, but some prefer a more aesthetically pleasing and immediately accessible list of missed calls, unread e-mails, and weather forecasts.

At any rate, both lockscreen widget connoisseurs and the merely intrigued should be pleased to hear DashClock hasn’t been abandoned. An updated version – 1.6 – brings new customization options, a fix for plugins that aggregate weather data, and an improvement to the way Dashclock interfaces with Gmail and SMS extensions.

Here’s an exhaustive list of changes:

What’s New

NEW! Visibility and color customization options

NEW! Visual design tweaks

NEW! New options for accessing DashClock settings

Weather extension reliability improvements

Fixed a few bugs related to the Gmail and SMS extensions

For those with compatible smartphones and tablets, DashClock is available for free from the Play Store.

Last evening, the developer of DashClock, Roman Nurik, pushed out an official update to his application, complete with a few features that beta users have been testing for a week or so.

Inside the update, support for Android 4.2’s DayDream feature is included, as well as more options for the weather extension. Users can now apply a manual location setting to have appear on their lock/homescreen, as well as more information to be shown. A number of fixes are also inside, such as a Gmail bug fix and a few SMS bug fixes.

What’s New:

Use DashClock with Android 4.2’s Daydream feature; great for use with desktop docks!

Option to specify a manual location for weather

Weather extension now shows high/low information

Calendar extension now shows the current appointment if it started in the past 5 minutes

The day was filled with app updates for some of our favorite apps, with the biggest probably coming from Evernote. The popular note-taking app received its “most requested feature of all time,” Reminders. Users can finally add reminders to notes, set alarms, and pin notes to the top of note lists, so that their lives can either feel complete or on the verge of becoming complete at all times. The Evernote update also improved copy and paste, corrected photo orders, improved shortcuts, and improved Japanese support.

But like I said, Evernote wasn’t the only app to receive an update. Falcon Pro pushed out multi-account support (was previously in beta), improved the look with a flatter UI, introduced a black theme, added column swiping, and transition animations. It’s a solid update that beta testers have been enjoying for a few days.

Chrome Beta received an update as well, along with DashClock. Neither are significant, but wanted to make you aware.

The changelogs for each app are included below.

Evernote:

Reminder: 3 features in 1

Alarms: Set due date and notifications for your notes

Note based to-dos: Mark notes as done

Pin notes: Order Reminder manually or by date

More Reminders features

Create Reminders in any note view and note composer

View Reminders by notebook

Subscribe to Reminders in Shared and Business Notebooks

Other improvements

Improved copy/paste in note view

Corrected photo order in multi-shot camera

Improved shortcuts functionality

Improved Japanese support

Chrome Beta (fixes):

247034: Dangerous download infobar is shown for almost every download

244052: PDF file isn’t downloading with Flywheel enabled

178893: Multiple new tabs links displayed in tab history when tapping on NTP tabs

Falcon Pro:

NEW : Multi Account Support

NEW : Flat design UI

NEW : Black Theme

NEW : Option to Swipe between columns (Android 3+)

NEW : Transition animations (Android 3+)

Bugfixes and improvements

DashClock:

NEW! Translations for Greek, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese

Calendar extension now shows the current appointment if it started in the past 5 minutes

A new DashClock extension was released this morning to allow Google Hangouts information to be displayed through the popular lock screen widget. The extension is about as simple as it gets in terms of info that it displays, but if you were looking to add Hangouts info to your ever-growing-list of DashClock add-ons, this is currently the way.

We should note that it does require root access, so this extension will not be for everyone. We’ll be adding this to our rolling DashClock extension list, which you should check out if you haven’t already. And don’t forget to join the DashClock beta program to keep up-to-date on the latest releases.

]]>http://www.droid-life.com/2013/05/31/new-dashclock-extensions-shows-hangouts-info-on-your-lock-screen/feed/33DashClock Opens Up Play Store Beta Programhttp://www.droid-life.com/2013/05/27/dashclock-opens-up-play-store-beta-program/
http://www.droid-life.com/2013/05/27/dashclock-opens-up-play-store-beta-program/#commentsMon, 27 May 2013 15:23:13 +0000http://www.droid-life.com/?p=109395DashClock Opens Up Play Store Beta Program is a post from: Droid Life
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During the 3-hour Google I/O day 1 keynote, one of the few Android-focused announcements that jumped out to us had to do with official beta testing through the Google Play store. Google announced that devs would no longer have to beta test their apps through 3rd party means, and that they would now be able to setup testing groups through Google Play, so that updates could be pushed just like they do with their stable apps. The first (at least that we have seen) to implement this new beta program, is of course a Googler. Anyone ever heard of a little lockscreen widget app called DashClock? We thought so.

Roman Nurik, the app’s founder, has opened up a DashClock community G+ that by joining, will grant you access to new beta builds for the app. At least one beta (1.5 beta 2) is already live and can be had as long as you follow a few instructions and join the program. In this new build, Roman mentioned that there are new DayDream settings, but nothing incredibly major. You may remember that he previously released DayDream functionality to a beta build that was not a part of this new Google Play program. The big deal here is the beta program itself.

If you are at all like me, and find yourself using Google’s Sound Search on a regular basis in order to purchase new music that is playing while you are on the go, and you also love DashClock, then check out this new extension called “Sound Search for DaskClock.” Rather than having to rely on the official Sound Search app or set up a separate page for it outside of DashClock on his lock screen (since lock screen widgets only allow 1 per page), the developer of this app decided to include Sound Search in DashClock itself.

Once downloaded from Google Play and added to your DashClock page, a simple tap on the “What’s this song?” line in DashClock will launch Google’s Voice Search which has grown to include Sound Search inside. If Sound Search isn’t your preferred music listener, he also included support for SoundHound and Shazam.

Yesterday, Roman Nurik teased DayDream support that will be included in the next major update of his now-famous Android lock screen app called DashClock. With no time table set for a release, we thought we should point out that you can download the current beta from the app’s code site today and experience all the DashClock-DayDream action you could ever imagine.

In this beta, don’t forget that you’ll first need to go into your phone’s Settings>Display>DayDream in order to set DashClock as the DayDream option. From there, you can tap the settings menu button, which then pops up DayDream-DashClock settings in the app. The only option that you can currently tweak, is the color of the text that moves in while DayDreaming.

One of the most underused features of Android 4.2 since it launched would be Daydream. A mode that allows your phone to sit idle and show you news and information sounds interesting, but only for people who have 4.2 and a dock for their device or use it while charging. Roman Nurik, creator of the popular lockscreen application Dashclock posted a teaser video today showing off an upcoming update that makes Dashclock available during Daydream mode.

When active, the clock floats around the screen along with the Dashclock extension, but “as you touch the screen, the clock and your extensions zoom up to let you dive into the details.” Further on in his post he said that the update should be in version 1.5, and we are already on 1.4.3, so we should expect this to come “in a few weeks” while he is preparing for Google I/O.

Oh, what, you thought we’d forgotten about DashClock after taking a couple week break? Come on, you know us better than that. We have two new extensions for you to try out today, both of which could come in handy from time to time. The first is not yet in the Google Play store, but it doesn’t require any specific permissions or any other shady business from what we can tell. It’s simply a way for you to display owner info on DashClock (name, company, phone, email, etc.).

The other is an RSS extension that allows you to add any site feed to show off the five most recent articles that you may have missed. With a simple tap, it’ll take you directly to the site to catch up on the latest in news. This is not a companion app to any other RSS feed application – it acts completely on its own.

Over the last couple of weeks, DashClock has quickly become one of the most talked about Android apps of the last year. Developed by Android engineer Roman Nurik, the app takes the simplicity of the stock Android lock screen clock and then expands its capabilities by allowing it to display all sorts of information through DashClock Extensions. The brilliance of the app comes by way of being open source, which allows other developers to create extensions of their apps that work within DashClock.

For example, in the picture above, you can see that I have added an extension that displays my battery status at all times. I also have extensions that shows me Google Voice messages that I have yet to check and unread counts of Tweets in Falcon Pro, . There are Facebook and Twitter extensions, ones for standard text messaging, all sorts for accomplishing tasks, and even some that allow you to launch any app of your choosing.

The extensions are being released by the day, so we thought we’d do our best to capture them in a rolling post.

Media:

Sound Search: App launches Google Sound Search to help you find music currently playing. [Play Link]

NowPlaying: Shows currently playing track from a number of popular music apps. [Play Link]

Music: Shows the currently playing track, album, and artist. Works w/ a variety of music apps. [Play Link]

TV Show Favs: Shows upcoming or recent episodes, or the next unwatched episode. [Play Link]

]]>http://www.droid-life.com/2013/02/25/dashclock-extensions-a-rolling-list-of-the-best/feed/70Google Voice Extension Now Available for DashClockhttp://www.droid-life.com/2013/02/23/google-voice-extensions-now-available-for-dashclock/
http://www.droid-life.com/2013/02/23/google-voice-extensions-now-available-for-dashclock/#commentsSat, 23 Feb 2013 16:18:09 +0000http://www.droid-life.com/?p=99701Google Voice Extension Now Available for DashClock is a post from: Droid Life
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Fellow Google Voice addicts, your DashClock extension dreams have finally been answered. Released this morning, we have an app called “Google Voice for DashClock” that does nothing more than display your last received message and number of unread new messages. You can also tap on items in DashClock to open the app. It’s incredibly simple, but is exactly what we have been waiting for – “we” as in those of us attached at the hip to Google Voice.

One thing to keep in mind, is that it requires you to enable it in Accessibility (Settings>Accessibility>DashClock Google Voice Extension). Also keep in mind that the app requires no special permissions, meaning it shouldn’t be able to capture any of your data. It should simply be relaying information from Google Voice to DashClock.

Yes, another DashClock post. The coverage, I’m sure can be nauseating, especially to those that don’t have lock screen widget access, but this app really is that good. It’s quite the simple idea, yet has been executed so precisely that it’s an app we can’t help but watch constantly. With our favorite apps receiving support for it on the regular, DashClock is here to stay, folks.

In today’s update, we get the power to choose which calendars to show events from on the lock screen. We also get to see the location of our next appointment, something I guess I didn’t realize was missing, but do greatly appreciate. Creator and Android engineer Roman Nurik also tossed in a shortcut to help you find new extensions for his popular app. Go get it! And yes, it’s still free.

Two of our favorite apps received updates within the last 24 hours that brings support for another favorite app of the moment, DashClock. Both PushBullet and Sliding Messaging now include extension support for the hottest lock screen widget of the year. In Sliding Messaging, you’ll see an unread message count that can be tapped to launch into the app. PushBullet’s extension shows the number of pushes you’ve made to your device along with a preview of your most recent push. When tapped, it launches into the list of recent pushes.

Other than DashClock support, Sliding Messaging brought in a new grey text color option, option to use Android Emojis, better handling of messages, speed improvements and bug fixes. PushBullet now plays your default notification sound when pushes are received and should have less bugs.